A real geek is someone who fixes things that aren’t broken. A person who takes ordinary stuff apart to see how they can be made better. Phil Bosua is one of those people. He’s already had one wildly successful invention (the ScanBox), and now he and his team are reinventing the lightbulb. Say hello to LIFX — the Wi-Fi lightbulb you can operate with your smartphone.
LIFX (pronounced “lyfex”) launched on Kickstarter just two days ago, but already it has smashed its $100,000 funding goal. It’s sitting pretty with $232,356 and 58 days to go. So why is it so popular?
Well, LIFX is a bulb that connects to your ordinary Edison, bayonet or downlight socket and then connects to your Wi-Fi network so that you can control it via your smartphone. On top of that, it’s multicoloured and fully customisable.
Fancy having white light that blinks green when you get a notification on your smartphone? You got it. What about having lights that strobe to match your crazy dubstep? You can do that too.
The lights can also be phased around your house, so you can create a night-light for the kids, and a sunrise light for yourself so you wake up naturally every morning.
It’s also insanely energy efficient. Because it’s LED lighting, Phil and his team estimate that you might only need to go replacing the globe once every 25 years. It also only uses 1/10th the power that ordinary globes do.
The only downside to this wonderful tech is the cost. Each LIFX bulb us about $US59 each. That drops to $US49 each when you order four or more, but if you’ve got a lot of light in your house, it gets expensive pretty quick.
Price aside though, the idea of a lightbulb that connects to my Wi-Fi network sounds awesome. I’m already doing the maths.